Haha! I found the remnants of an old Casio SK-1 Motherboard and decided to see what would happen if I popped the ROM from that into my K3, the results are interesting to say the least;

The First waveform seems to be a nice 8 bit Saw kind of "Cheap Toy Piano" type sound, the second working waveform is a nice mellower bassy wave, the 3rd working waveform is kind of an aliased lead, the 4th sounds like a ring modulated Saw, preset 17 sounds aaaalmost like some sort of FM noise! Preset 33 sounds like noise overlaid with a saw wave

meatballfulton wrote:What DX is doing is how the "hidden waveforms" you see ESQ-1 owners writing about work.

On some synths there are ways to trick the CPU into reading from ROM areas that contain other code but then use the data as waveforms...it's not like Ensoniq planned it that way, in fact it's a bug.

The results are pretty random but lean towards metallic noises for obvious reasons.

It's really easy to do on synths where one or more ROMs hold nothing but waveform data.

I'm still not clear if he is talking about roms in the gamer sense (I download SNES roms that I can play on a SNES emulator, Super Mario on a Mac!) or in the hardware sense. These arent just upper waveforms, but are from a different synth.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave

calaverasgrande wrote:I'm still not clear if he is talking about roms in the gamer sense (I download SNES roms that I can play on a SNES emulator, Super Mario on a Mac!) or in the hardware sense. These arent just upper waveforms, but are from a different synth.

He means taking the system ROM chip out of the SK-1 and putting it in the K3's waveform ROM socket. They might be different synths, but ROMs tend to conform to standard sizes and pinouts (except when a manufacturer goes out of their way to be proprietary, which they usually don't because it costs more,) so there's usually no reason you can't do something like this.

Percivale wrote:A photo or two might clear things up to those curious how the connection worked.

calaverasgrande wrote:does an SK1 has socketed chips?Or do you have to carefully desolder them?

commodorejohn wrote:

calaverasgrande wrote:I'm still not clear if he is talking about roms in the gamer sense (I download SNES roms that I can play on a SNES emulator, Super Mario on a Mac!) or in the hardware sense. These arent just upper waveforms, but are from a different synth.

He means taking the system ROM chip out of the SK-1 and putting it in the K3's waveform ROM socket. They might be different synths, but ROMs tend to conform to standard sizes and pinouts (except when a manufacturer goes out of their way to be proprietary, which they usually don't because it costs more,) so there's usually no reason you can't do something like this.

The Casio SK-1 stores its waveform data in an as of unknown way in a 23C256 MASKROM chip, which is identical size and pinout to the original 27C256 UVPROM's inserted, later on when they get here in the mail I am going to put in 28C256 EEPROMS which are easier to program and chop in custom waves from my PC now that I have a dump and visual representation of the original Ceramic UVProms

Slot 1 has some basic waveforms, this is where the SK-1 ROM is plugged.Slot 2 is some sort of interpolation or modulation to prevent aliasing by the digital wave generator in the Kawai.Plugging the Kawai Slot 2 rom in with the SK1 rom adds a bit of beef to it and makes it sound like this:

Percivale wrote:A photo or two might clear things up to those curious how the connection worked.

calaverasgrande wrote:does an SK1 has socketed chips?Or do you have to carefully desolder them?

commodorejohn wrote:

calaverasgrande wrote:I'm still not clear if he is talking about roms in the gamer sense (I download SNES roms that I can play on a SNES emulator, Super Mario on a Mac!) or in the hardware sense. These arent just upper waveforms, but are from a different synth.

He means taking the system ROM chip out of the SK-1 and putting it in the K3's waveform ROM socket. They might be different synths, but ROMs tend to conform to standard sizes and pinouts (except when a manufacturer goes out of their way to be proprietary, which they usually don't because it costs more,) so there's usually no reason you can't do something like this.

The Casio SK-1 stores its waveform data in an as of unknown way in a 23C256 MASKROM chip, which is identical size and pinout to the original 27C256 UVPROM's inserted, later on when they get here in the mail I am going to put in 28C256 EEPROMS which are easier to program and chop in custom waves from my PC now that I have a dump and visual representation of the original Ceramic UVProms

Slot 1 has some basic waveforms, this is where the SK-1 ROM is plugged.Slot 2 is some sort of interpolation or modulation to prevent aliasing by the digital wave generator in the Kawai.Plugging the Kawai Slot 2 rom in with the SK1 rom adds a bit of beef to it and makes it sound like this:

I can't quite put my finger on what this sounds like though...

Here's me just making messed up robot noises (Headphones warning):

That is really really cool!You are a braver soul than I. I'm a big dork about anti static precautions when handling chips. I use chip tools whenever feasible. Though part of it is the mad scientist shtick to be honest.

Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with all thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave

calaverasgrande wrote:You are a braver soul than I. I'm a big dork about anti static precautions when handling chips. I use chip tools whenever feasible. Though part of it is the mad scientist shtick to be honest.

The fun part is if you unplug the CPU Program the LED display it'll scream at you for a while then send junk midi (perhaps its Serial Terminal??!?) for some reason. Its maybe asking for "please insert Girder?"